In critically injured, ill or anesthetized patients, it is often necessary to insert an endotracheal tube into a person's airway to facilitate ventilation of the lungs and to prevent the possibility of asphyxiation or airway obstruction. The most common routes of inserting the endotracheal tube are oral, in which the tube is passed through the mouth and larynx into the trachea, and nasal, wherein the tube is passed through the nose and larynx into the trachea.
The insertion of the endotracheal tube often involves serious risks, such as damage to the vocal cords and a prolonged intubation procedure in which the patients breathing is stopped, but oxygen is not yet delivered to the patient as the tube has not yet been inserted. It is estimated that about one third of deaths occurring during a surgical procedure while under anesthesia for morbidly obese patients are associated with the intubation process. Some of the difficulties that persons performing endotracheal intubation encounter include the restriction of view as the tube is inserted, variations in the anatomy of the patients, an uncomfortable and unnatural position of the person performing the procedure while holding the instrument, and the necessity for rapid intubation.
With the advent of various video devices and cameras, instrumentation has been improved to the extent that it can enable viewing of the cords and larynx on a video screen thereby facilitating the intubation of the patient in a relatively quick and safe manner. However, the known imaging intubation devices still suffer from a number of disadvantages and drawbacks.
For example, with the current systems, the intubation is typically accomplished by inserting a rigid laryngeal blade into a person's trachea, and then inserting an endotracheal tube alongside the blade. Such rigid laryngeal blades are pre-shaped to have a certain curvature generally corresponding to the curvature of a person's airway passage anatomy. However, different types of patients often have different anatomies and it may be challenging to use the rigid blade for different types of patients because the blade's shape cannot be easily adjusted to fit the anatomy of a particular patient, particularly at the distal end of the blade.
Additionally, because the current systems require separate insertion of the laryngeal blade and the endotracheal tube, they require significant time to set up and to insert into the patient. In emergent situations this delay could be hazardous, if not deadly.
Another major problem with current systems is the limited field of view, requiring more time for the user to intubate the patient. Typically, the imaging device is positioned at a distal tip of the device body which only provides a limited view of the surrounding tissue, even if the distal tip is capable of being angled to a certain degree.
What is desired, therefore, is an improved system and method for intubating a patient that address the disadvantages and shortcoming of the prior art systems described above.